Diary of an Ugly Duckling (15 page)

she jumped up and hit a key on the laptop, filling the

TV screen with Audra’s underwear-clad image.

“Dr. Bremmar, let’s begin with you.”

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* * *

mar, who, Audra’s intuition told her, always tried to

be kind, had very little positive to say.

“We can do the surgery before you lose the rest

of the weight—to reshape your thighs—” He drew

on the keypad in front of him, tracing a slimming

purple line that appeared over the bulges in the im-

age of Audra on the screen. “And your tummy.”

More lines. “And your derriere.” Still more lines.

“But you wouldn’t really be able to see the effects

of the liposuction until you lost a substantial

amount of weight. Probably about, what? Sixty more

pounds—”

“I’m thinking more like seventy,” the nutritionist

piped up, bending back over the sheaf of papers in

her hand. “And even with a fairly low-calorie diet

and a pretty strenuous exercise regimen, I’m not

sure she could lose that amount in only three

months. She’ll lose some fat in the process of the

surgery, but as I calculate it, even on only 1200 calo-

ries, it comes out to about three or four pounds a

week, or”—she scribbled—“between thirty-five and

forty-five pounds overall.” She shook her head.

“Any faster than that, and I’m afraid we’ll be court-

ing a host of nutritional deficiencies—”

“But it says here that Audra’s got a pretty decent

ratio of fat to muscle,” interjected Julienne, the fit-

ness chick. She popped a lazy bicep, admired it,

then continued in a low, calm voice. “Let’s say she

loses forty-five pounds of fat and builds up her lean

muscle mass. She could easily look sixty or even

seventy pounds slimmer than she appears today.

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Karyn Langhorne

And she’s already in pretty good physical shape, by

nature of the kind of work she does.”

“That’s one of the things that argues in favor of her

as a candidate. Her excellent overall health,” Dr.

Koch interjected.

“For the body, I agree,” Dr. Bremmar nodded.

“But the face . . .” He shook his head and sighed.

Dr. Koch echoed the sigh. “Yes . . . the face,” he

repeated, and said no more, letting the room lapse

into a prolonged silence.

Audra stared from expert to expert, but suddenly

no one in the room was looking at her . . . except Dr.

Jamison, whose velvety brown eyes had never once

wavered from her features since he’d entered the

room, even though, since his introduction, the man

hadn’t said a word.

“Well?” Audra looked around the room, forcing

her voice to its most jocular tone, even though her

heart was pumping loud in her chest, and her ears

were ringing with ugly phrases like
dude with tits

and
not my daughter
. “Don’t tell me my face is too

ugly to fix. I mean, look at me,” she gestured toward

the screen. “Almost anything you do will be an im-

provement. How can you lose?”

This time there was no laughter, and still no one,

not even the staring Dr. Jamison, spoke. Shamiyah

cast a quick look at Audra that conveyed nothing

but her nervousness, but she said not a word.

Finally, Dr. Bremmar cleared his throat. “See, the

thing is, darker skin poses some .. . particular

problems,” he began, cutting his eyes at Dr. Jami-

son, as though, as a black man he should be the one

to speak. But Jamison just kept staring at Audra,

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121

wordless and soundless, his expression as blank as

the gleaming surface of the conference table. “And

while your medical history doesn’t suggest any par-

ticular predisposition for those problems, we can’t

be sure—”

“He’s talking about keloid scarring,” Dr. Koch in-

terrupted, seeming impatient with the other man’s

gentle, hesitant style of speech. “Do you know what

that is?”

Audra frowned. She was about to reply when

Camilla jumped into the silence with, “Big, ugly,

raised scarring.” She grimaced. “We do your face

and you heal badly and—”

“I wouldn’t sue you, I promise—”

“Of course you wouldn’t. The releases you signed

would completely bar any type of lawsuit. That’s

not the point. The
point
,” she continued dramati-

cally, “is that the entire show is on the line. The

show may be called
Ugly Duckling
, but we make

swans here. If you’re not going to come out a swan,

then we’re not gonna spend production dollars on

you—” She cut her eyes at Shamiyah. “No matter

how much ‘character’ you have.”

Audra blinked at the woman, assessing her qui-

etly. She wasn’t unattractive, but from where Audra

was sitting, she certainly wasn’t good-looking

enough to get away with this kind of crap. Still, no

one seemed to take any position to correct her bad

behavior, and Audra got the feeling, today wasn’t

the day for her to take on the job.

“I’ve gotten cuts before—some of them pretty bad

ones—and they didn’t heal badly,” Audra offered.

“I mean you guys have inspected almost every inch

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Karyn Langhorne

of me. You don’t see anything that suggests that this

surgery would be any different—”

“Unfortunately, Audra, it could be quite differ-

ent.” Dr. Bremmar sounded a little like a school-

teacher, patiently giving a lesson to a resistant

audience. “We’re talking about a fairly serious and

dramatic surgery here with the possibility for infec-

tion and serious scarring under the best of circum-

stances. Darker skin, as I indicated earlier, often

tends to show darker, more noticeable scarring, even

if it’s not the keloid variety.” His purple marker

reappeared, as a close-up of Audra’s face dominated

the screen. “See, what I would want to do—and I’m

sure Herb has similar ideas—is liposuction here to

create a stronger jaw line.” He drew purple lines on

the skin beneath Audra’s chin. “Restructure the

cheekbones and the nose”—more lines—“to give

the face more definition, then pull some of the fatty

deposits from beneath the eyes and the brow

bone . . .” He kept drawing until Audra’s face looked

like it had been scribbled over by a two-year-old with

a new crayon. He stopped abruptly, surveyed the

screen and shrugged. “Every one of these lines is a

potential scar—a black line on your face, at best. At

worst—”

“It doesn’t help that you don’t have any family

history from your father’s side. That information

might help us determine if it would be wise to go

ahead—”

“No, there’s no paternal history,” Audra inter-

rupted, shrugging aside the feelings that simply

mentioning the subject brought to the center of her

consciousness. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw

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123

Dr. Goddard make a move for her notebook and be-

gin scribbling animatedly, but the shrink’s notes

were the least of her concerns at that moment. “Why

don’t we do a test, then? I mean just do a cut and see

what happens?” Audra offered. “I mean, I could

even pay for it—”

“There’s no reason to put you through that,” Dr.

Bremmar said, just as Dr. Koch murmured, “That’s

really not necessary.”

“Your acne suggests you might be prone to a cer-

tain amount of scarring, Audra,” Dr. Bremmar

said, cutting his eyes in Dr. Jamison’s direction

again. “I’m no expert, but I do know there are drugs

that could make a substantial difference in that

condition—even minimize the scarring you already

have, but they won’t have the same effect on post-

surgery scarring unless—”

“Then I’m not sure why you even had me come

out here,” Audra interrupted, staring at the purple-

marked images of her face and body. “Sounds like

you’ve already decided it’s hopeless.”

“No, not hopeless. Far from it.”

Audra turned toward the heavy bass of the man’s

voice. The room became quiet, the kind of quiet of a

dozen people listening eagerly for an important

man to make an important speech.

“There’s a way to do this kind of extensive facial

surgery that can minimize the risks of scarring to

the same level as a light-skinned or Caucasian pa-

tient,” Dr. Jamison continued softly. “But it’s highly

controversial. Not everyone believes it should be

done. And some people even find it offensive—”

“But it could be great for ratings for both of those

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Karyn Langhorne

reasons,” Camilla interjected, her eyes gleaming.

“Your transformation is sure to be one of the most

watched ones we’ve ever done if you agree to Dr.

Jamison’s treatments—”

“Treatments?” Audra stared at the man, meeting

his even gaze with curiosity. “What kind of treat-

ments?”

Dr. Jamison’s lips curled into the faintest of smiles.

“There are a variety of methods, actually. Usually a

combination of medications taken orally and ap-

plied topically.” His gaze narrowed, searching her

face. “In your case, we’d also have to work in med-

ication for the acne, but that shouldn’t pose any seri-

ous additional detriment. But you’d have to begin

immediately to hope to achieve any significant light-

ening effect before the surgery begins—”

“Lightening effect?” Audra frowned. “What are

you talking about?”

Dr. Jamison gazed at her, his liquid eyes seeming

to penetrate right to the heart of who she’d always

thought she was and what she’d always thought she

wanted. “You said on the tape you sent you were

sick and tired of being called ‘fat, black and ugly,’ ”

he said in his slow, sonorous voice. “Diet and exer-

cise will eliminate the fat, Drs. Bremmar and Koch

can eliminate the ugly.” He shrugged. “That leaves

only ‘black’ to be addressed.”

“Black,” Audra repeated. Her eyes circled the

room, searching for clarification, but she found

nothing in any of the other faces, except rapt inter-

est. These people were clearly waiting for some-

thing. Something monumental. “Black,” Audra said

again, forcing out a strangled little laugh. “Don’t tell

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me you can turn me into a white woman!” She

coaxed the laugh into a chuckle of merriment. “You

can’t possibly—”

Dr. Jamison’s voice rose above hers, drowning it

out with force and clarity. “The drug is called hy-

droquinone. If you apply it daily between now and

the Big Reveal, you’ll start this process a dark-

skinned African-American woman . . . and end it as

a much, much, much lighter-skinned one.” He wig-

gled his fingers in something like a wave. “Good-

bye fat, black and ugly. Forever, if you like. There’s

only one catch,” he added a second later. “You have

to decide today. Right now.”

Chapter 10

“He’s kidding, right?” Audra swung her face

around the room, then fixed her eyes back

on Dr. Jamison. “You’re kidding, right? You can’t

actually—”

“I assure you, Ms. Marks, I can.” His voice was

calm and level, but his eyes danced as though he

found the conversation highly amusing. “Actually

it’s not all that uncommon in the entertainment

world. Surely you’ve noticed how some African-

American performers start their careers one shade

of brown and, as they become more success-

ful, seem to become a lighter shade of brown?

True, some of that may be attributed to lighting

and makeup . . . but in other cases, that shift in

skin tone is very much a direct result of our pro-

cess.”

He touched the keypad and cleared all of the

purple markings Dr. Bremmar had made on the

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127

close-up image of Audra’s face. “First of all, we ad-

dress the recurring acne itself with isotetrinoin—

it’s been proven to have a fairly decent success rate

in minimizing the occurrence of acne scars, even in

darker skin.” As he spoke, the picture was altered

and the clusters of bumps faded from Audra’s

cheeks, chin and forehead. “If all we were con-

cerned about was the acne, we’d address laser treat-

ments to the upper dermis—the visible layer of

skin”—Audra’s image’s skin became clearer with

the words—“but that’s not the effect we’re going

for. What we want is lighter coloring on all of your

skin—or at least on all the visible surfaces. The re-

sult is—well, obvious.”

As Audra watched, the image of herself light-

ened on the screen, from the deep, bitter chocolate

color she was used to seeing in the mirror . . . to

the color of coffee beans . . . and onward up the

color scale until the woman staring out of Audra’s